On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Eric Seppanen wrote:
> Before anybody really freaks out, I'm not seriously suggesting linuxbios
> be changed in any way. But I don't think that kernel->bios calls are
> always an absolutely _horrible_ idea, and shouldn't be rejected simply
> because linux doesn't do it that way today. Linux hates the bios because
> the bios is 16-bit, and proprietary, and often broken. A 32-bit, open,
> working bios is much friendlier.
but consider this. We want to boot linux, openbsd, freebsd, netbsd, and
maybe even Plan 9. All those systems have very different ways of doing
things -- particularly for SMP. What happens when an OS calls linuxbios?
how do we manage SMP? what's the right way to handle an interrupt while
we're in the BIOS? Just locking out the OS for the time we're in the BIOS
seems like a bad idea. What if an OS calls the BIOS, and "something bad"
happens, and the BIOS can't get back to the OS? This happens all the time
on my Thinkpad -- the only way out is a reboot. The more you look at BIOS
calls and the complications, the worse it gets. I think that's one reason
the Linux and *BSD folks are yanking ACPI up INTO the OS.
I can see your point, but I think we'll be able to get what we want with
the in-kernel ACPI support. It is pretty neat.
ron
